November 19, 2009

We’ve been staying up a bit too late for us to get up at 5 o’clock every morning, so I still haven’t been that good about getting up early. We’ve been trying to get to bed earlier, though, and last night we did a really good job. We went to bed early, turned off the light early, and Muffin fell asleep early.

I almost always stay up for a few minutes, like 15, playing games on my iPhone after the lights are out. Last night, I was playing a game, and Loth started scratching on his crate door and growling. I told him to quit it and assumed nothing was wrong since Figaroo wasn’t making any noise. Loth kept it up for a long time.

Figaroo is excellent about being in his crate; he has no problem with it since we always give them snacks when they go in. Then he waits patiently until whenver we’re ready to let them out. He practically never makes any noise during the night, and he just barks at strange noises during the day, being a little guard dog, even in his crate.

Loth is fine with being in his crate during the day, and he’s usually good about going to bed. He might scratch a few times and pound on his door, but he’ll usually stop after I tell him to knock it off. Then in the morning when he decides he wants to get out of his crate, he starts it up again. That’s the really annoying part because he might decide he’s had enough at 4am. Even when we do get up early, it’s not that early. Basically, he’s not great about being in his crate, but he’s not terrible. He quiets down and goes to sleep pretty quickly.

Last night, he kept up his pouding and growling for about 20 minutes, so I decided that maybe a) his sheet was messed up in his crate or b) he needed to go outside. He usually doesn’t growl, so I thought there might be something behind all his noise this time. I turned on the light, didn’t wake Muffin up, and opened their crates. They came out and were just kind of hanging out. I took them out of the bedroom, which was actually hard to do because Figaroo had come running out of his crate with his bedtime biscuit. He didn’t want to part with it, but I wanted him to go outside. I had closed the back door kind of early last night, so I was afraid that they hadn’t been able to go outside long enough.

I opened the back door, and Loth went running out, I thought, “Great. He just had to go potty. Now he’ll go to sleep.” Figaroo wasn’t interested in going outside, so I gave up on him. He was too interested in getting back into the bedroom to have his biscuit back. Loth came back inside, and we all went back to bed. I gave them some more snacks to make them happy in their crates, and I went back to bed.

Twenty seconds later: pounding on a crate. What the eff? His sheet was fine; I checked it when I let them out. He just went potty. He had some water before getting into his crate the first time. He was just being a total asshole. He just wanted to get out of his crate!

I shushed him for a bit, but I didn’t want to be too loud and wake Muffin up. Eventually, I gave up and tried to go to sleep. Loth kept it up for about 10 more minutes; he probably kept it up longer, but I finally fell asleep.

At about 4 or 4:30 this morning, I was awoken by some more banging on a crate and some more growling. I tried to ignore it and pretend I could totally just sleep through it, but it didn’t work. I laid in bed, trying to will myself back to sleep, and we all know how successful that tactic normally is. I got up at about 5:10. I opened the crates, scooped up Figaroo, and snuck out of the bedroom as quietly as is possible with arms full of stuff.

I let them outside. Luckily, there was nothing for Figaroo to bark at, because he loves to bark at stuff. They came back inside, and I closed the door. Loth sniffed at some kibbles and the water, didn’t bother with either, and then got to the real reason he wanted out of his crate. This is a picture of the only thing that he has done this morning: